


Bofur's Durins Day Eve sidequest

by RarePairFairy



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Cold Weather, Food, Friends to Lovers, Have a Happy Hobbit Holiday Gift Exchange, Introspection, M/M, Massive Coats, Partying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21568147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RarePairFairy/pseuds/RarePairFairy
Summary: Realistically, it's now or never.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Bofur
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55
Collections: Have A Happy Hobbit Holiday 2019





	Bofur's Durins Day Eve sidequest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Incogneet0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Incogneet0/gifts).



Bofur and Bilbo didn’t differ a great deal for having come from vastly different cultural backgrounds, but they had one especial major agreement:

At a party, the kitchen was the place to be.

It was where Bilbo had a sobbing conversation with his cousin after falling in love for the first time with the handsome (and already engaged) lad from up the road. It was where Bofur’s cousin had given birth to her first baby at a pub during a festival, and where that baby thence had a storeroom named in its honour and was given free board for life by the pub’s owner. It was where Bilbo had his first kiss while dressed ironically as an ent at a fancy dress party. It was where Bofur was hastily taught to make whiskey slate cocktails on the eve of a new year’s celebration when the bartender skipped town the same morning and left the pub short-staffed – otherwise, Bofur was repeatedly assured, they wouldn’t have hired him.

The kitchen was where the love happened. It was the nexus of family.

For hobbits, the kitchen and pantries were the most important parts of the house; its beating heart. They were possibly the only people in Middle Earth who found it perfectly normal to sign marriage papers at the kitchen table. Not just normal, in fact, but romantic and symbolically significant.

For dwarves, and in particular for dwarves who developed debilitating crushes on hobbits, the kitchen held a similar significance. Just on more of a micro than a macro level.

Every family that had stories had some set in the kitchen. Most of Bofur’s family group lived communally, and the kitchen was the one place you could really run into anyone. He’d gone without seeing an in-law for almost a decade even after the fella moved in - they’d bumped into each other when Bofur went down to fetch a pint from the cellar or a chopping board to wedge a wobbly table or something. There the dwarf was, sharpening an axe that turned out to be a knife for chopping down the child-sized mushrooms somebody had found in their washroom.

But this eve. This night of this year, of _this_ journey, _this_ turning of a page that seemed increasingly to Bofur like the end of his book. This was going to be a good night.

It was Bofur’s private mission to subtly – and wasn’t that an effort for a dwarf, to try and be subtle – find out where the kitchen was, knowing that if he found it, he would find at least one of the two things he wanted to find.

Those two things were Bombur and Bilbo.

Bombur he wanted to find because the fish he very nearly ate off a beaten “silver” (except definitely not) platter was rank beyond belief, and while Bombur had an excellent appreciation for food, he didn’t always take the time between inhales to appreciate whether something was going to give him food poisoning. Bombur might have a belly of steel, but tomorrow was just too important and Bofur had his responsibilities as a brother to consider. Laketown was clearly in economic dire straits, and Bofur suspected his fish wasn’t the only one that had been pulled out of yesterdays’ barrel in the haste of their host to test the load-bearing ability of the tables.

Brother aside, his reasons for wanting to find Bilbo were nominally quite noble. Bilbo looked worse for wear even before they climbed into the barrels, and positively like a drowned mouse when they climbed out of them. Furthermore, Bofur had taken the opportunity of being crowded together in the square to stand very close to their hobbit, and between the pugnacious shouts traded by Bard and the Master and their King he had definitely heard some heartbreakingly pitiful sniffles. He didn’t know what hobbits were like with colds, and he’d own they were sturdier creatures than they looked like, but he’d fry his own hat in lard and eat it with parsnips if he let their bedraggled hobbit suffer quietly at a party.

And Bofur _hated_ parsnips.

So, search he did, for anything most closely resembling a food preparation area.

When Bofur set out after his fish experience he expected it to be an easy task. Duck in to the kitchen where either Bilbo or Bombur or both were probably interfering with the cook’s activities, check on them, maybe coax Bilbo into a glass of something, maybe throw a blanket around his shoulders, maybe plop him on a windowsill and play him a soothing ditty, maybe sit next to him and do a little star-gazing …

But the blasted kitchen was proving blasted tricky to find. Bofur began to suspect there wasn’t one in the building.

Stepping out onto the dock, or rather the front porch, which was technically also a dock, Bofur wrapped his gifted coat tight around his middle. It was as frozen as Melkor’s heart outside.

His breath billowed before him like smoke. Hastily he cupped his hands before his mouth and rubbed them together. For what was essentially a rickety shack, the tavern had retained an impressive amount of warmth. So many bodies filling the room, sweating and playing and laughing together. He’d even seen Thorin clapping tin pints with some men in guard helmets. He’d definitely seen Dwalin and Nori at the cards table. The _same_ cards table.

Across from the tavern, Laketown huddled together in a warren of wharves and rotten wood and crooked buildings. If it weren’t for all the lanterns lit in celebration, Bofur didn’t think a dwarf could half see across the water.

He wondered what Laketown looked like on a quiet night. The thought alone was eerie. Any old drunk could take one step too far in the blind dark and drown in an instant. He wondered how many people they lost like that. And men lived such short lives to begin with.

Gosh and galoshes, but it was freezing. Bofur tugged his errant imagination away from bodies coating the lakebed at the feet of the stilt-legged town, and set his heart’s eyes on a handsome little fellow with charmingly curly hair and a heart of pure mithril. And guiltily, as a secondary priority, reminded himself of what happened the last time his brother got food poisoning.

Little buggers must be around somewhere, and somewhere was a kitchen.

Bofur stamped across the dock skirting the tavern and crossed a bridge over ice sheets to the next nearest building, which had a promising plume spouting from the smokestack. The windows were high and grimy enough to conceal whatever was inside, but the door was propped open enough to reveal a strip of orange light.

All Bofur could see when he stopped just outside the door was a wooden bench, or perhaps it was an unmanned desk. He pushed open the door a smidge and poked his head in. The entryway wasn’t overly narrow but it was hard to see what rooms it led to, and while there didn’t appear to be anyone to ask, Bofur didn’t think it looked like a kitchen.

He backed away from the door and looked around. There was a wooden swing sign on a metal rod projecting from the front of the building, with a helpful image of a bed burned into the wood.

Of all things, there was something nostalgically domestic about that. Where he was from, they didn’t have much use for paint or alphabets either.

Perhaps it was because he hadn’t expected to encounter anything even vaguely homey about this forsaken shanty town that made the sign so striking, and made him approach again.

At that moment a figure appeared in the doorway. She was lanky as any other member of the race of men and haggard as any other resident of Laketown, but her face positively glowed when she lit eyes on Bofur standing outside with his hands stuffed in his armpits.

‘Surely you’re not all tuckered out already?’ she asked. ‘It’s barely past midnight.’

Bofur paused and gave a short laugh.

‘Aw, no lass. Just lookin fer a friend. Ye haven’t seen the little fella around by chance?’

With admirable politeness, she tried to conceal her confusion.

‘The one without a beard,’ he added helpfully.

‘Ah! No, afraid not. I assumed he was with your folk,’ she answered. ‘Though he may have gone to bed without me noticing. He does seem a very quiet fellow, and a little peaky, if it’s not too bold. I can knock on his door if you like.’

Ah. So this was where their rooms were. Someone had probably told him at some point. He was just planning on sleeping under a table at the tavern, truth be told, and it wouldn’t be the first time. Nice to know he had a place to collapse if he could still walk in a few hours.

‘Nay, I wouldn’t want to interrupt if he’s resting. Thanks a bunch all the same,’ he said, leaning into a slight bow that the ladies always found cutely quaint.

Not a total loss, thought Bofur as he moseyed away contemplatively. Although he did hope selfishly that Bilbo hadn’t gone to bed yet. More power to him if he did. Sensible fellow was probably curled up with a hot cup of tea in front of whatever fire was roaring inside, probably in a main room. Or a master bedroom. Who knows, men didn’t seem to have the same ideas about communal living as dwarves did, even when they were all squashed in together like this.

The more he thought about it, the more Bofur hoped Bilbo was doing exactly that, resting his little heart out. Yavanna knows he’d earned it. That and more.

He returned to the tavern and tried the other side of the building.

Now _there_ was a promising smell.

The low building was attached to the back of the tavern. There was no door between them, only a connecting dock, mostly hidden from sight by the tavern itself. Rolling doors like a storeroom gate were pulled open from the inside.

A man passed him holding a stack of covered racks of something grilled. More food. To be fair, they were all extremely hungry, and so were half the residents of Laketown going by the looks of them.

A brief shadow passed over Bofur’s mind. He reckoned half the crowd in the tavern was there for the food and not for them. He couldn’t blame them in the slightest.

The shadow was dissipated like smoke by a strong wind by the high, charming laugh he heard in that moment through the door as it was pulled closed from the inside.

Quickly he dashed in, smiling apologetically to the aproned fellow who dodged aside to let him pass. He was recognized instantly as a dwarf and given a greeting and a brotherly clap on the back before the fellow returned to his work.

It was a nice change from being sworn at, for sure, and whether nobly done or not, the celebrations certainly felt like a New Year’s celebration. Nobody could stay unhappy for long with this mood in the air. It was the kind of night everybody deserved to have at least once in their life.

And there he was, standing some feet of distance away between Bofur and a blazing bread oven, his hair and features lit up by firelight. It was sufficiently warm inside that he had removed the outer coat given to him by the men, and even rolled his sleeves up. Bofur soon saw why.

A table with a bench seat drawn up to it stood to his right, and Bilbo returned to it with strips of pastry in his floury hands to deftly lattice them over the top of what looked very much like a pie.

Bofur sauntered over, hands in his pockets, trying his best to look well at-ease.

‘Shoulda known I’d find you in here,’ he said casually.

Bilbo shot him a bright look. Bofur didn’t think he fooled him for a minute.

‘And here I am. If you’re going to be nosing about you may as well help.’

The bench was too unwieldy to drag to the oven. The three humans in the room were all busy with their own work scurrying back and forth, often between the kitchen and the tavern or to grunt orders and instructions at some or another man at the door. Bilbo roped Bofur into helping him steal a stool so that he could reach the bread oven.

It was the only appropriate thing in the room for cooking the pie, which Bilbo assured was not going to be as good as he knew he could make if only he was in _his_ kitchen, but it would “do” and at least it wouldn’t be fish. Bofur assured him, going purely by the smell, it would do a damn sight more than “do”. Bilbo blushed and Bofur’s whole belly did a flip-flop. And not the food poisoning kind.

‘I’ll even hold the stool for you if you if you promise me first bite,’ Bofur said, trying only a little bit to be flirtatious.

‘You may have to,’ Bilbo said, doubtfully eyeing off the three-legged stool. It looked like it originally had four legs. The thing wobbled as Bilbo stepped onto it and, caught up in equal parts the moment and his own daft impulsiveness, Bofur put his hands on Bilbo’s waist and held him steady as he slid the pie into the gentle glow of the bread oven with a shovel-shaped instrument. Bilbo may have squeaked. It was hard to be sure, the way the shovel scraped the floor of the oven.

Bilbo carefully stepped down from the stool. Bofur regretfully moved his hands away as soon as Bilbo’s toes touched the floor. Bilbo coughed.

‘Well. That should be half an hour, give or take. It might be nice to sit outside and smoke while we’re waiting. I wouldn’t want to be in the gentlemen’s way.’

The gentlemen, who Bofur had seen ruffling Bilbo’s hair fondly more times than either of them were comfortable with, didn’t look like they’d mind. But far be it from Bofur to keep Bilbo in a room where men ruffled his hair.

Bilbo shivered a little and Bofur looked around for his coat.

‘Where’d you put the thing?’

Bilbo looked confused. Bofur plucked at his own coat.

‘Oh! Goodness, I couldn’t cook wearing one of those, it’s far too large. Should be around somewhere.’

‘You’ll catch yer death,’ Bofur said fretfully. To his surprise, Bilbo chuckled.

‘Sorry. You’re worse than my aunt,’ Bilbo said. His eyes didn’t much leave the floor, and Bofur was sure he was imagining things. Still. Promising.

He never assumed that someone liked him as much as he liked them. Wore his heart way out on his sleeve, and he was quick to give it away, a little too quick maybe. But he’d spent months assuming Bilbo didn’t fancy him at all, and really, wasn’t that the same sin in reverse?

‘I can’t see it,’ Bilbo said worriedly, now back up on the bench and searching around. ‘Oh dear. Maybe somebody’s picked it up. I don’t blame them, it doesn’t look like something someone my size would wear.’

For heaven’s sake, even his grumbling was cute.

‘Borrow mine,’ Bofur blurted out.

Bilbo looked at him.

The mad scramble for words began in Bofur’s head, and out they tumbled in a rush. ‘Figured on looking you could fit two people easy in a coat this size. Might as well find out, if we’re heading ootside.’

He may as well slap himself and save Bilbo the trouble.

The pause was less than a second, but in the way moments such as these often do, it felt in hindsight like a lifetime. Then, bless him to bits, Bilbo barked out a laugh that nearly startled the cook at the other end of the room into dropping a pan.

‘Well, if you’re really offering. It might indeed work as a blanket.’

That wasn’t a no, Bofur told himself optimistically.

He pulled the cord and shrugged the coat off his shoulders. As they walked out the door, he draped it over Bilbo’s shoulders in what he hoped was a comforting and gentledwarfly manner.

Bilbo curled inward and tugged the coat so that it almost covered his front.

‘Goodness, two of us really do fit! You can see how I couldn’t cook wearing one.’

Bofur chuckled, cheeks warm despite the chill, and brought out the crude pipe he’d whittled during a spare hour.

They sat with their feet dangling over the water, a little way to the left of the door. From their position they could see across the water in the light from the tavern. They were far enough out of the way that nobody bothered them except to cheerily wish them the best of fortunes on their journey. It was a nice novelty, being a hero.

It was a companionable silence mostly. Bofur had a reputation as a talker, but even a talker knows the value of a quiet night in cosy company. They hadn’t had many of those, and Bofur hadn’t had Bilbo to himself like this before.

Dim clunks of ice drifting into wooden poles and boats gently tapping oars in the docks filled the patches of stillness. Only a few hours ago, the tavern had seemed as alive as if the building itself would stand up and go for a jaunt. But in the wee small hours, most of the activity seemed more along the lines of winding down. A woman in a stained apron appeared in the back of the building to beat out a dripping straw mat, looking exhausted.

Bofur noticed that, for every truly drunk fellow they saw, another man or two had his or her arms slung around his waist. Nobody was walking alone. It was a bit like watching a shambling three-legged race, except that everybody was drunk off their bonnet and going in different directions.

Good idea for a party game, that.

‘I suppose it’s to stop them falling into the water,’ Bilbo observed, after Bofur tracked with high interest the journey of three shanty-bellowing barmaids from the tavern to an alley and out of sight.

‘Very sensible, that,’ Bofur said, tapping out the spent pipe on the side of the dock with unnecessary emphasis.

He wasn’t a planner, Bofur. He hadn’t spent the journey scheming on how to swoon the hobbit into his arms. He might have pined, surely, but Bofur was as much an artist as he was a miner, and artists didn’t strategise. They waited for inspiration.

Bofur was feeling inspired.

‘Care to stop me falling into the water?’ he said with a wink.

Bilbo peered at Bofur. It wasn’t that dark, Bofur thought, already feeling a little crestfallen. That one deserved _at least_ a giggle, he thought.

Then, he felt an arm creep around his waist.

‘I’d hate to be remiss,’ Bilbo murmured. ‘You _are_ woefully inebriated.’

Bilbo’s eyes were on his toes again. His shyness was all the more becoming for what Bofur knew lay behind it. The hobbit was his age, at least in hobbit years, and here he was blushing to the tips of his ears. His _ears_. Mercy.

Bofur plucked up his courage and put his arm around Bilbo.

‘I’m not that drunk, lad.’

It was hard to tell if Bilbo was tense or relaxed with all the layers still between them. Bofur didn’t remove his arm, and after a moment, Bofur felt Bilbo’s thumb absent-mindedly petting his side.

Bofur was contemplating leaning in for a peck when Bilbo went rigid in his arms.

‘The pie!’ he exclaimed. Bofur blinked.

‘Pie?’

‘It’ll be burned,’ Bilbo said, voice like a wounded bird in a thicket. And like that, quick enough to startle Bofur into almost falling into the water, he was up and flitting to the kitchen.

 _Blast the pie_ , Bofur thought irritably, _blast it until it’s burned black_. And then he immediately felt terrible, because obviously Bilbo cared about it very much, and it was undwarflike to wish unfavourably of a dear one’s craft.

He got up and followed at a leisurely pace, determined not to look offended. When he reached the door, Bilbo was standing on the stool with his long toes clutching its edges, presumably in a balancing effort, and pulling the pie out of the oven with the edge of the shovel-like tool.

Bofur stood at Bilbo’s side and only put his hands on Bilbo’s waist to steady him when the stool wobbled. Bilbo cast him a grateful look.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And, sorry about ... it was horribly rude. I hope you don’t think …’

Bofur waited, hands still on Bilbo’s hips.

A man coughed behind them, patiently holding a tray of biscuits.

Bilbo borrowed the tray once the biscuits (“I wouldn’t bawther this late, but they’re eggsellent for a hangover and goodness knows the boys’ull need it tomorrah!”) and carried the pie to the table for inspection.

Standing on the bench seat and looking down at it, Bofur couldn’t see what was wrong. It was a little crispy around the edges for sure. He always liked some contrasting texture in his food.

Bilbo looked like a wilted daisy.

‘I make a _far_ better pie at home,’ he griped. ‘You just can’t cook them evenly in bread ovens. The temperature was all wrong.’

Bofur chuckled, trying to lighten the mood, and gently patted Bilbo’s back. ‘I’m sure it’ll be delicious all the same.’

‘I was hoping it could be dessert,’ Bilbo protested. ‘But it’s miserable. I couldn’t in good conscience feed this to anybody.’

Bofur, who did not think of himself as a having a natural social instinct, could tell there was something he was missing. Bilbo had very clearly almost said “you” and replaced it with “anybody”. Did hobbits feed people things as important gestures? Was he reading too much into it? He was definitely feeding too much into it. Reading too much into it.

Whatever.

‘Never mind good conscience then,’ Bofur said. ‘I want to eat it. I’ll eat the whole thing, save you the stress of being too embarrassed to offer it to anybody else.’ He topped it off with a wink for good measure.

Bilbo definitely blushed. Furiously. So, food probably did have some sort of obscure social code attached to it. Bofur wondered if it was anything like the flower language Bilbo had mentioned and that Bofur was very much wishing he’d paid more mind to. What did pies mean, in food language? Had Bofur accidentally just made a clever dirty joke?

‘I don’t suppose I can try to stop you,’ Bilbo asked demurely.

‘Only in a superficial sense,’ Bofur said seriously, peering from under his hat. ‘I don't want to have to steal it from you.’

‘I thought stealing was my job,’ Bilbo countered, and was that a flirtatious little hip-check? Bless his woolly toes.

‘I thought you _were not_ a burglar,’ Bofur said, mimicking Bilbo’s haughty tone.

‘A lot can change in a few months,’ Bilbo said, a little soberly.

‘You’re tellin’ me,’ Bofur said, also a little soberly, and realized that they hadn’t broken eye contact since he asked permission to eat the entire pie.

About half a second passed before he realized that now, if ever, was the right moment. All three of the men were outside having a smoke or scoffing unguarded biscuits. The firelight was dim and warm, the air was cool but not too cool. The smell of pie tinted the moment with dreamy sweetness and a feeling of home.

 _I’ll regret it if I don’t_ , Bofur thought.

And then Bilbo kissed him.

His lips were dry and very soft, and warm. He pressed light and insistent, like a kitten pushing against a cheek, and politely, as politely as you could ever surprise someone with a kiss. He cradled Bofur’s bottom lip between his own, it being the lip that wasn’t hidden under a moustache, and it felt like the gentlest thing that had ever happened to Bofur in his life.

Then, swift as a wingbeat, it was over. Bilbo looked down and his fingers fidgeted with a loose button on his shirt.

Bofur cupped Bilbo’s cheek. He wanted another kiss but he was grinning too hard. Bilbo met his eyes, cheeks aflame, and chuckled.

‘Don’t you dare regret that,’ Bofur whispered firmly through his smile.

‘Never,’ Bilbo said. ‘At least, not until tomorrow. I’ll feel like a dunce for not kissing you sooner, tomorrow.’

Bofur wrapped his arms around Bilbo.

‘Let tomorrow be tomorrow,’ he said into Bilbo’s hair. ‘We’ve got an eternity of tonights.’ He looked down at their side. ‘And pie. We’ve got a tasty pie.’

For the look Bilbo gave him then, Bofur would rob a hundred mountains from a hundred dragons.

**Author's Note:**

> Bombur got food poisoning but he’s fine don’t worry about it it’s fine
> 
> (part of this was written while listening to the Bee Gees and I’m not telling you which part)


End file.
